She wanted to make it count, especially after how the weekend started.
Iwalani Rodrigues, who was playing in her last regular season game in a Utah uniform, scored 17 points and grabbed eight rebounds to lead the Utes to a 70-52 victory over Oregon on Sunday. Two days earlier, she had her worst shooting performance of the season in their loss to Oregon State.
“I concentrated more,” Rodrigues said of her performance on Sunday.
She said she wanted to leave it all on the floor because it was her last regular season game as a Ute.
The win sealed Utah’s No. 6 seed in this week’s Pac-12 Conference Tournament. Utah will open up with a game against No. 11-seeded Arizona.
The Utes (17-12, 8-10 Pac-12) jumped on the Ducks early, opening up a 15-6 lead just minutes in, and stretched their lead to 16 at the half, 41-25.
The Utes held strong in the second half, leading by as many as 22 points before coasting to the 18-point victory.
“We wanted to kill them,” Rodrigues said. She also said that they played with a lot more energy in the second half compared to Friday, which allowed them to win easily.
Taryn Wicijowski finished with 18 points and nine rebounds, and Michelle Plouffe had 13 and eight to keep the Utes ahead from start to finish.
“We focused on coming out with a lot of energy in the second half,” said head coach Anthony Levrets. “It helped that we kept making shots.”
Utah went 9-18 from beyond the arc and shot 48 percent overall, which should give them confidence heading into Thursday’s opening-round game in the Pac-12 Tournament.
Ciera Dunbar started at point guard in place of Dani Rodriguez, who was out with the flu.
Utah played strong defensively, limiting Oregon (4-26, 2-16 Pac-12) to 35 percent shooting and only three assists, as Oregon couldn’t move the ball effectively on Utah.
On Friday, the Utes blew a nine-point halftime lead with a lackluster second half marred by poor shooting as they fell 54-46 to the Oregon State Beavers.
Plouffe was the only Ute with a notable performance, but her 27 points and 12 rebounds weren’t enough for Utah to overcome their struggles shooting from the outside.
Behind Plouffe’s 17 first-half points, the Utes entered halftime with a nine-point lead. It didn’t take long for the Beavers to come back, though. They opened up the second half with an 11-2 run to tie the game at 31 only four minutes and 40 seconds into the second half.
Utah couldn’t buy a shot late, and Oregon State was able to pull away to end its 10-game losing streak.
The normally sharp-shooting Rodrigues had an awful night, going 2-14 from the field and didn’t attempt a single three-pointer. It was part of an overall bad shooting display by Utah, which only shot 38 percent for the game and 27 percent in the second half. Plouffe was the only Ute to score more than seven points, and only four Utah players scored any points at all.
Rodrigues corrected that in Utah’s win over Oregon, giving the Utes a shred of momentum heading into the conference tournament this week.